Experience the impact!

[Chazar]

...or rather what is the impact of experience?

I know the numbers, and I've seen the table (see Liga's pretty good manual addenda and search for experience), but does that few addtional points really matter for ordinary units?

Sure, that 5 additional points in attack & defense give your super-VQ an additonal edge for little cost, but I feel that there is something wrong with that:

Think about that poor milita man that had to leave his family and got lucky, survived dozens of tremendous battles and hardships to reach an astronomical level of experience (for non-leader that is) and all he received in the end were 2 measly hitpoints and an unlucky blow from a hostile freshman? Doesnt sound heroic to me...

Heroes should also emerge from the field by valor not only by random chance like those self-proclaimed national heroes! Therefore I propose:
1. More additional hitpoints, it doesnt matter much for to SCs anyway, but for poor militamen it does!
2. Ordinary units should be gift-of-reasoned when reaching the 5.level!

I know that there is the pretender-crammed Hall of Fame to address this problem somewhat, but that doesnt help our poor milita man either without point 2!

So what do you think? Vote!

[Boron]

for some normal units exp matters too .
examples : jotunheim , big tramplers like caelum mammuths , various kinds of knights , pangenean stronger units like minotaurs .

there are imho 3 main criterias for normal units that they profit from additional exp :
- base hp of 20+
- regeneration , recuperation , immortality to heal afflictions are good too
- blessable

i think base / new era pan is the king here with minotaurs and centaurs because they have recuperation too .

but militia etc. with less than at least 20 hp die too easy from only 1 hit via damage spell or archerfire .

one summon prophits very well from exp too :
vampires because they get revived and iirc keep their exp

[reverend]

Yes, I'd definately like to see more impact of experience on "normal" units. Once in a while you get a couple of those little guys that fight for years, but they still aren't any different from fresh recruits. Give them some credit! Give them some boni!

[Cainehill]

I find that the morale is the biggest impact on "normal" troops, ie human-class with 8-12 HPs. Hence, I won't be voting, because there wasn't a vote for "has a small impact".

For archers, the increased accuracy might be considered noticeable also.

Commanders definately see an impact, albeit some more than others; accuracy and spell research makes higher level mages more worthwhile, definately. Also, the way most commanders can lead more troops as they go up levels.

While I have often thought that experience benefits could be somewhat improved, I'm not sure what it would do to balance - would it make hordes of militia / LI too much more valuable, compared to bigger, "better" units? (If each unit got 1 HP per exp level, 30 LI get more of a benefit than 5 minotaurs. Perhaps it could be scaled - 10% of the HPs as an increment, which even now might be an improvement at the levels where a HP is given.)

And how badly would it shaft nations like CW Pangea and AE/SG Ermor, most of whose undead units are mindless and can't gain experience?

As far as units getting to 5th level experience - I've certainly never seen anything over 3 stars on a troop, and that was with Pangaea.

[Pickles]

Cainehill said:

As far as units getting to 5th level experience - I've certainly never seen anything over 3 stars on a troop, and that was with Pangaea.

I have had 4 star Niefel giants with a spectacular collection of afflictions in most cases.

Go the Chalice!

I got a 5 star Ice devil too - in response to whoever it was that said they never say anyone except Orion with 5 stars.(in another thread long ago)

Pickles

[Chazar]

Cainehill said:
As far as units getting to 5th level experience - I've certainly never seen anything over 3 stars on a troop, and that was with Pangaea.

While I have often thought that experience benefits could be somewhat improved, I'm not sure what it would do to balance - would it make hordes of militia / LI too much more valuable, compared to bigger, "better" units?

But that is what I meant: Experience is nice for commanders & summons (@KEL: succubae included - your're somewhat obsessed by your succubae, aint ya? ). For normal units, one rarly notices, especially since one seldom sees an ordinary unit with 4 or 5 stars. So if they are so rare, one would not expect to see hordes of super-trained-milita-men-task-forces as well, but since its a rare thing anyway, it should be good. Like those 4th level sites: They are pretty rare but pretty good...

-

Hmm, but the polls seem to argue against me. So I wonder about the following: Do you sort out your experienced critters to built special veteran squads?

I've read somewhere that 'e' (or 'x'?) should select all experienced unit in a squad, similar to pressing 'w' to select all wounded, but while 'w' works fine, neither 'e' nor 'x' does ever something although there are 1 or 2-star units in the squad. What am I doing wrong here, or is that key simply not working anymore?

[Kel]

Chazar said:
(@KEL: succubae included - your're somewhat obsessed by your succubae, aint ya?

That was my first succubus joke !
Not saying no but still, just thought i should weigh in on the importance of experience with that particular unit =P

Chazar said:
So I wonder about the following: Do you sort out your experienced critters to built special veteran squads?

On a more serious note, I don't generally look at the experience or afflictions of normal troops unless it is a somewhat fragile, but big, unit at that time in the game, like an elephant for example. Even then, only if I had a smaller force and was trying to judge if they were sufficient to fight a certain fight.

- Kel

[Chazar]

Kel said:
Not saying no but still, just thought i should weigh in on the importance of experience with that particular unit =P

(BTW: Is summoning a succubus really worth it experience-wise? If I think about the experience of 55 blood slaves...)

[mlepinski]

I think it's important not to discount the Attack and Defense bonus for normal troops. Of course it doesn't matter if I have one experienced infantry-man because he'll just die to arrow fire or some such thing. But if I have an entire batallion of experienced infantry against a batallion of opposing inexperienced infantry, then I think the experience really pays offs. When ALL of my units are 10-15% more likely to hit and 10-15% less likely to be hit I feel that there is a tangible effect on the outcome of the battle.

I might support some minor tweak to experience (like maybe capping regular unit experience at 3 stars instead of 2) but feel changes proposed in this thread are too extreme.

- Matt Lepinski :->

[Endoperez]

Saber Cherry was a wonderful person with great talent in maths and programming. She has since left the forums and was studying when we Last heard of him. This list of hers tells the probabilities of success when two stats are compared in generic DomII dice roll. I quote the results in here. It seems these only matched the mathematically calculated ones up to four digits, but I believe that is enough...

The most interesting numbers are in the middle. If attacker's att is two points higher than defender's def theprobability of hit is 70%. With no difference it would be 54. 16% change with two stars seems nice for me... Not too big, but visible. And don't forget that experience lowers encumberance!

The old thread got deleted accidentally, but here's the crucial element

This is a chart of the probability that the difference between two dice rolls will meet or exceed the listed number. Each dice roll is a 2d6*, or 2d6 upwardly-open pair.

How to use the chart: An example.

What is the probability that a light infantry (att=10) will hit a soulless (def=2, after applying the "fist" penalty)? The difference is (2-10) = -8, but hitting requires you to beat, not just meet, the enemy defense roll. So the roll difference must be at least (2-10)+1 = -7. Looking at the "-7+" row, you see that a light infantry has an 91.8% chance of hitting a soulless.

The reverse case:

Soulless has att=3 after applying the fist -1 att penalty, and a light infantry has def=12. So for a soulless to hit, it must score a differential roll of (12-3)+1 = 10. Looking at the "10+" row, a soulless has a 4.6% chance of striking a light infantry.

The chart can also be used for damage versus protection rolls, poison rolls, and probably morale and magic resist rolls. Almost all Dominions dice rolls seem to be of the form ((2d6* + attacker's modifier) - (2d6* + defender's modifier)), which this chart describes.


Testing (2d6*, labelled 0-5, offset=2) over 200000000 rolls.

Reverse-Cumulative Difference Statistics:

-30+: 99.994%
-29+: 99.992%
-28+: 99.988%
-27+: 99.984%
-26+: 99.978%
-25+: 99.969%
-24+: 99.957%
-23+: 99.941%
-22+: 99.918%
-21+: 99.887%
-20+: 99.844%
-19+: 99.785%
-18+: 99.705%
-17+: 99.596%
-16+: 99.447%
-15+: 99.244%
-14+: 98.969%
-13+: 98.601%
-12+: 98.106%
-11+: 97.442%
-10+: 96.554%
-9+: 95.373%
-8+: 93.822%
-7+: 91.805%
-6+: 89.194%
-5+: 85.852%
-4+: 81.605%
-3+: 76.281%
-2+: 69.830%
-1+: 62.391%
0+: 54.222%
1+: 45.773%
2+: 37.605%
3+: 30.165%
4+: 23.714%
5+: 18.388%
6+: 14.145%
7+: 10.802%
8+: 8.191%
9+: 6.174%
10+: 4.624%
11+: 3.444%
12+: 2.556%
13+: 1.894%
14+: 1.399%
15+: 1.031%
16+: 0.755%
17+: 0.553%
18+: 0.404%
19+: 0.295%
20+: 0.215%
21+: 0.156%
22+: 0.113%
23+: 0.082%
24+: 0.060%
25+: 0.043%
26+: 0.031%
27+: 0.023%
28+: 0.016%
29+: 0.012%
30+: 0.008%


-Cherry

Found with Shrapnel Search function, only thread with "+saber +cherry +difference +probabilities".